Ownership isn’t the only way to put down roots anymore, and for a growing number of residents, it isn’t the preferred way either. An Optima community offers something different, a way of living that feels complete on its own terms. The reasons are layered, but they share a common thread: residents are choosing freedom without compromising on quality, design, or community.

A Lifestyle Designed Around You

Optima has spent more than four decades refining what residential living can be. Each community is developed, designed, constructed, and managed in-house, which means every detail, from the architecture down to the resident events, reflects a singular vision. That vision spans two regions and six distinctive communities. In Chicago and the North Shore, residents find Optima Signature in Streeterville, Optima Lakeview in the heart of Lakeview East, and Optima Verdana in downtown Wilmette. In Scottsdale, Optima Sonoran Village anchors the Old Town neighborhood, while Optima Kierland and the newest community, Optima McDowell Mountain, define modern living in North Scottsdale. Across every location, design, service, and lifestyle are inseparable. For residents, the result is simple: homes that are well designed and easy to live in. Floor-to-ceiling windows, open floor plans, signature vertical landscaping, quality appliances, and thoughtful finishes are part of every home.

Amenities That Make a Home Feel Limitless

One of the clearest reasons residents choose to rent at Optima is what waits just beyond the front door. Resort-style amenities turn the building itself into an extension of home, and each community brings its own distinct character to the experience. At Optima Signature, the 57-story tower in Streeterville offers four full floors of amenities, including indoor and outdoor heated pools, a basketball court, and co-working suites, plus indoor access to Whole Foods. Optima Lakeview, a rooftop sky deck delivers panoramic city views alongside a heated pool and spa, BBQs, fire pits, and a glass-enclosed party room. At Optima Verdana on Chicago’s North Shore, lush vertical landscaping wraps a rooftop Sky Deck and residents’ club designed around a hospitality-infused quality of life. In Arizona, Optima Sonoran Village stretches across more than five acres of landscaped gardens, terraces, and courtyards, with two outdoor pools, a 19,000-square-foot fitness center, and indoor basketball and pickleball courts. Optima Kierland raises the bar with an Olympic-length rooftop pool, an outdoor pickleball arena, an indoor golf simulator, and a rooftop running track. And at Optima McDowell Mountain, the 8-story towers frames sweeping views of the McDowell Mountains, Pinnacle Peak, and Camelback, surrounded by world-class wellness amenities, rooftop sky decks, and an indoor/outdoor fitness center. At Optima, amenities aren’t an afterthought. They’re part of the original design, shaping communities where residents can swim, train, gather, host, and recharge without ever leaving home.

Service That Returns Your Time

The other side of renting at an Optima community is what residents don’t have to do. There are no roof repairs to schedule, no landscapers to manage, no appliances to replace. In their place is a layer of service designed to give time back: on-site maintenance, in-home package delivery, housekeeping, dry cleaning, grocery delivery, and a 24/7 concierge. It’s a model rooted in hospitality. Many residents describe the experience less like an apartment and more like living inside a private resort, one that happens to be in the heart of Chicago, the North Shore, Old Town Scottsdale or North Scottsdale.

Community Without Obligation

There’s also something to be said for the sense of community that forms inside an Optima property. On-site resident coordinators curate events, clubs, and gatherings, from book clubs and kid’s clubs to cocktail evenings on the sky deck, guided hikes, and cooking demonstrations, turning everyday encounters into real friendships. Residents can engage as much or as little as they like. The community is there when you want it, and your private residence is there when you don’t.

The Freedom Factor

Underneath all of this is the simplest and most powerful reason residents choose to rent: flexibility. The ability to move with a career, a season of life, or a change of scenery, between Streeterville, Lakeview, Wilmette, Old Town Scottsdale, Kierland, and North Scottsdale, without the friction that comes with owning a home.

A Different Definition of Home

Choosing to rent at Optima is choosing a life that’s been thoughtfully designed on every level: the building, the amenities, the service, the community, and the freedom to live the way you want to live. It’s not about renting instead of owning. It’s about living more, with less holding you back. That’s what makes Optima feel like home. Visit a community and experience the difference firsthand.

For more than four decades, Optima has been designing and building luxury residential communities across Arizona and Illinois. Today, the portfolio spans six distinct communities, each offering its own scale, setting, and way of living. What unites them is Optima’s unmistakable design philosophy: Modernist architecture, bold geometric forms, carefully curated materials, open-concept living, and the brand’s signature vertical landscaping. What makes each one different is the lifestyle it creates. The right Optima community comes down to where you want to wake up, how you want to spend your weekends, and what kind of place feels most like home.

Here’s a guide to all six.

The Chicago and North Shore Communities

Optima Signature: Streeterville, Chicago

Optima Signature rises above Chicago’s skyline as a 57-story luxury apartment tower in Streeterville, featuring 490 residences and 58,000 square feet of street-level retail and commercial space. If your ideal life involves walking to the lakefront in the morning, working downtown, and coming home to skyline views from a high floor, Optima Signature is built for you. The amenity experience is equally elevated, featuring resort-style indoor and outdoor heated pools, sauna and steam rooms, basketball, squash, and bocce courts, and a golf simulator. Within the Optima portfolio, it offers the most dynamic urban high-rise lifestyle.

Best for: Anyone drawn to skyline living, world-class amenities, and immediate access to the Loop and the lakefront, the most urban, high-rise experience Optima offers.

Optima Lakeview: Lakeview, Chicago

Optima Lakeview is a seven-story, transit-oriented residential community at 3460 N. Broadway, featuring 198 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments along with 14,000 square feet of street-level retail in the heart of Lakeview. The defining architectural feature is the landscaped interior atrium that rises through the building’s seven-story core, capped by a fixed skylight that draws natural light deep into the residence experience. Its 40,000 square feet of amenities include a rooftop sky deck with a year-round heated pool and spa, an indoor basketball court, a golf simulator, a yoga and stretching studio, a dog park and pet spa, and a demonstration kitchen.

Best for: Residents seeking a design-driven community with exceptional amenities, a connected neighborhood atmosphere, and effortless access to transit and the best of Chicago.

Optima Verdana: Wilmette, IL

Located in the heart of Wilmette, Optima Verdana brings Optima’s design-forward approach to the North Shore with 100 luxury rental residences and 8,000 square feet of street-level retail, positioned directly across from the Metra station for seamless commuter access. Inside each residence, elevated finishes meet thoughtful functionality, with premium kitchens, flexible spaces designed for working from home, and expansive private terraces framed by Optima’s signature vertical landscaping. Over 60 acres of lakefront, including beaches and a sailing harbor, are within walking distance. Anchoring the entry plaza is Curves and Voids, a sculpture whose laser-cut steel arcs catch the North Shore light differently in every season.

Best for: Residents who want suburban scale and lakefront access without giving up urban convenience or design quality, and who value an easy commute into the city.

The Arizona Communities

Optima Sonoran Village: Old Town Scottsdale

Sonoran Village is the largest existing community in the portfolio: a 10-acre, 5-building, 768-residence mixed-use community in Old Town Scottsdale with 13,000 square feet of commercial space and over 5 acres of lushly landscaped courtyards. Its sculpture garden alone houses five original Cor-Ten steel works, Silver Fern, Duo, Triangles, Intersecting Arches, and Curves and Voids, distributed through the courtyards so residents encounter art on the way to the pool, not in a gallery setting. The location puts you in the middle of everything Old Town Scottsdale has to offer.

Best for: Residents who want walkable Old Town Scottsdale energy, a true community feel across multiple buildings, and the most immersive art-and-architecture experience in the portfolio.

Optima Kierland: Kierland, Scottsdale

Located in the heart of North Scottsdale near Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter, Optima Kierland is a five-tower luxury community that brings together both for-sale condominiums and luxury rental residences in one of Arizona’s most design-forward urban neighborhoods. Spanning approximately 9.5 acres, the community blends striking modern architecture, sweeping desert and golf course views, and Optima’s signature vertical landscaping that wraps each tower in living greenery.

What makes Optima Kierland unique is its building-by-building approach to lifestyle. Rather than relying on one centralized amenity deck, each tower features its own private residents’ club and rooftop wellness experience. The community includes two condominium towers alongside three apartment towers, 7160, 7140, and 7190, with 579 rental residences across the apartment collection. Across the community, residents enjoy rooftop pools and spas, state-of-the-art fitness spaces, golf simulators, pickleball, landscaped courtyards, and Arizona’s first rooftop running track. Inside, residences feature floor-to-ceiling glass, expansive private terraces, and gourmet kitchens designed to blur the line between indoor and outdoor living.

Best for: Residents who want a high-rise rental experience in North Scottsdale with proximity to premier shopping and dining, and who value being able to choose the tower that best matches their lifestyle.

Optima McDowell Mountain: North Scottsdale

Optima McDowell Mountain is the newest Optima community in North Scottsdale, set on 22 acres of desert with sweeping views of the McDowell Mountains, Pinnacle Peak, and Camelback. Tower 7220 offers 210 luxury rental residences from studios to three-bedrooms, and Tower 7230 brings condominium ownership with residences now selling.

Life at 7220 is centered around wellness, outdoor living, and connection to the desert. Residents can start the day with a rooftop workout or coffee overlooking the McDowell Mountains, spend afternoons relaxing by the rooftop pool, playing pickleball, or working remotely from thoughtfully designed coworking spaces, then end the evening with a sunset spa session or dinner on a private terrace surrounded by Optima’s signature vertical landscaping.

What makes the experience especially unique is the scale of what surrounds it. With 75% of the site dedicated to landscaped open space and one of the largest private rainwater harvesting systems in the United States, even the first tower feels connected to a much larger vision, one that blends architecture, sustainability, and the year-round outdoor lifestyle that defines North Scottsdale.

Best for: Anyone drawn to sweeping desert views and the newest construction in the portfolio, with the option to rent at Tower 7220 or own at Tower 7230.

How to Decide

A few questions to narrow it down:

Where do you want to live?

Illinois (Optima Signature, Optima Lakeview, Optima Verdana) or Arizona (Optima Sonoran Village, Optima Kierland, Optima McDowell Mountain)? Within those, do you want urban core (Optima Signature, Optima Lakeview). Suburban-with-transit (Optima Verdana). Downtown walkability (Optima Sonoran Village), or a quieter neighborhood feel with mountain views (Optima Kierland, Optima McDowell Mountain)?

What scale of community do you want?

Choices range from intimate (Verdana at 100 residences) to mid-sized (Lakeview at 198, Signature at 490, Kierland at 579) to neighborhood-scale (Sonoran Village at 768, McDowell Mountain at 1,330 when fully built).

What matters most in your daily life?

Lakefront walks and skyline views? A landscaped atrium and a transit stop? A sculpture garden between you and the pool? An Olympic-length rooftop pool with desert views in every direction? Each Optima community is custom-designed to its physical location, so the question isn’t really which one is best, it’s which one is best for you.

Explore Optima’s communities further and discover even more of the details that make each one unique.

One of the most desirable apartment residences at 7220 Optima McDowell Mountain is the 2B-39 floor plan. These spacious two-bedroom homes offer the perfect balance of expansive indoor living and exceptional outdoor space, ideal for couples, roommates, or anyone who wants generous room to entertain in the desert.

Key Features:

• Open-Concept Living Area: With approximately 1,835 square feet of interior space and a generous 272 square feet of exterior terrace, the 2B-39 is built for indoor–outdoor living. Floor-to-ceiling windows with sunscreening roller shades fill the home with natural light and frame stunning South-facing views.
• Gourmet Kitchen: This culinary centerpiece features a sleek peninsula with counter seating, quartz countertops, chrome Kohler fixtures, an induction cooktop in polished granite, a wine refrigerator, an appliance garage, and premium stainless-steel appliances, all designed for refined entertaining and everyday ease.
• Dual Bedrooms with 2.5 Baths: A spacious primary suite features dual vanities and elegant finishes, while a well-proportioned secondary bedroom and full second bathroom provide flexibility for guests, a home office, or a roommate. A separate half bath adds welcome convenience for entertaining. Blackout shades in the bedrooms ensure restful, private comfort.
• Smart Storage & Conveniences: A dedicated laundry closet with full-size washer and dryer, custom millwork closets, and integrated smart-home technology bring everyday luxury to a beautifully organized home. Elegant 10″ luxury plank flooring runs throughout.

The 2B-09 reflects Optima’s approach to design, practical layouts, modern finishes, and a strong connection to the outdoors that suits the North Scottsdale setting.

The Optima McDowell Mountain Lifestyle

Every apartment at 7220 Optima McDowell Mountain is enhanced by a service-driven community experience. From a 24-hour concierge dedicated to personalized support, to on-demand pet-care services, package handling, and tailored fitness and wellness offerings, every detail is designed for effortless living. Vibrant community events foster connection, while thoughtfully designed amenities, including a fitness center, pickleball and basketball courts, and lush indoor–outdoor spaces, elevate daily life. This is more than a home; it’s a lifestyle where comfort, convenience, and luxury living come together in the heart of North Scottsdale.

Contact us today to schedule a tour and discover why Optima McDowell Mountain is becoming the pinnacle of residential living in Scottsdale.

Click here to view our floor plans & current availability.

A beautifully designed building is a starting point. The courtyards, the sky decks, the residents’ clubs and rooftop pools, these spaces are built to support a certain quality of life. But the quality of life they produce depends on something architecture alone cannot deliver: the people inside them, and what brings them together.

At Optima, resident events have always been understood as the living expression of the design philosophy. The same care that goes into the placement of a planter on a rooftop terrace goes into the calendar of events that fills that terrace with people on a Saturday evening. The two are inseparable. One creates the stage. The other is the performance.

The Events That Define a Community

Across Optima communities, the events calendar is as varied as the communities themselves. In Scottsdale, rooftop movie nights on the sky decks draw residents together under the desert stars. Wine and cheese evenings in the residents’ club create the kind of unhurried, low-stakes social environment where the neighbor you have passed in the corridor for six months becomes someone you actually know. Fitness classes on the rooftop, led by instructors who know the community by name, turn a morning workout into a social ritual that residents build their week around.

At Optima Sonoran Village, the heart of the events calendar is the community itself, six acres of lushly landscaped courtyards, two resort-style pool areas, and a 19,000-square-foot residents’ club that gives the management team the spaces to create events worth showing up for. Poolside gatherings on summer evenings. Holiday celebrations in the residents’ lounge. Fitness classes that move between the rooftop and the pool deck with the seasons. At Optima Sonoran Village, the Old Town Scottsdale location means the neighborhood is always part of the story, with the energy of one of Arizona’s most vibrant communities right outside, and the calm of the courtyard waiting when residents return.

At Optima Kierland, each of the towers runs its own dedicated events calendar, exclusive to that tower’s residents, organized around the specific character of the sky deck and residents’ club that belong to that building. A movie night on the 7190 rooftop is a different evening than one on the 7140 deck, with a different group of neighbors and a different view of the North Scottsdale skyline. That specificity of community, the sense that these events belong to your building, not just the broader property, is part of what makes the Optima Kierland experience genuinely unlike living anywhere else in North Scottsdale.

At Optima McDowell Mountain, the drama of the Sonoran Desert setting gives events a quality of place that is difficult to replicate anywhere else. Group sunrise hikes from the front door into the desert, organized by the management team and attended by residents who discover that the person who lives two floors above them shares the same appreciation for early morning desert light. Community barbecues on the sky deck where the views of the McDowell Mountains provide the setting and the only obligation is to show up.

In Chicago, events take on the character of their neighborhoods. At Optima Lakeview, the proximity to Wrigley Field means game-day gatherings on the rooftop sky deck that become annual traditions, the kind of event that residents plan their summer around and bring friends to. Holiday parties in the glass-enclosed party room. Summer rooftop dinners with the Chicago skyline as the backdrop. At Optima Signature, the setting of 57 stories above Streeterville makes resident events feel genuinely unlike anything available anywhere else in the city, from Club 52 sky terrace gatherings for Apex residents to building-wide celebrations that make the most of one of the most extraordinary residential addresses in Chicago.

At Optima Verdana on the North Shore, the scale of 100 residences gives events an intimacy that larger communities cannot replicate. A wine tasting in the library lounge becomes an evening where every face is familiar. A rooftop gathering with the Bahá’í Temple visible to the north becomes the kind of evening that residents describe when they explain why they chose to live here.

The People Behind the Events

None of this happens without the people who make it happen. At Optima, the property management teams who run our communities, the managers, the leasing teams, the resident coordinators who know residents by name and take the experience of living here personally, are the architects of the events calendar. They understand what each community needs because they are present in it every day. They know which residents are new and need an introduction, which events reliably draw people out, and which moments in the calendar deserve something more than the ordinary.

This is what Optima means by community management: not the administration of a building but the cultivation of the life inside it.

Why It Matters

There is a particular feeling that comes with living somewhere that takes your experience seriously enough to celebrate it. The opening of a new tower. The holidays that mark the turning of the year. The ordinary Tuesday evening that becomes extraordinary because the team organized something worth showing up for. These moments accumulate. Over time, they are what residents remember about a place, not the square footage, not the finishes, but the evenings on the rooftop with neighbors who became friends, the mornings that started with a group hike into the desert, the sense that the community they live in is genuinely alive.

At Optima, the art of the celebration is part of the art of building. The spaces are designed to be worth gathering in. The events ensure that the gathering actually happens. And the result is communities that feel, in the truest sense of the word, like home.

Come experience the lifestyle firsthand. Explore Optima’s communities and discover the events, amenities, and moments that make each one distinct.

Every sport has a moment when it stops belonging to enthusiasts and starts belonging to everyone. Pickleball had that moment a few years ago, and it hasn’t slowed down. It’s now the fastest-growing sport in the United States, spreading onto rooftops, amenity decks, and residential buildings across the country.

The question for anyone designing places to live isn’t whether to take it seriously. It’s what it’s telling us.

What Pickleball Actually Reveals

Pickleball didn’t get popular by accident. It got popular because it quietly solved a problem residential design has wrestled with for decades: how to bring people of different ages and fitness levels into the same space, on the same side of the net, and send them home with the kind of easy familiarity that turns neighbors into a community.

Players of all ages can compete. The court fits where a tennis court cannot. And the social architecture of the game, the partners, the between-point chatter, the standing around afterward, isn’t a side effect. It’s the product.

Optima Was Already Ahead

At Optima, sport has never been an amenity line item. It’s part of how the buildings were designed to feel.

The rooftop running tracks at Optima Kierland exist because the architects thought about how residents might want to spend a morning. The Olympic-length rooftop pools at Optima McDowell Mountain are there because daily practices are what give a community its rhythm. Movement isn’t layered onto the experience of living here. It is the experience.

Pickleball arrived at Optima before the broader conversation caught up:

• Optima Kierland — 7190 Tower features a covered outdoor pickleball arena, one of the first at a luxury community in North Scottsdale, plus a full indoor basketball court striped for pickleball.
• Optima McDowell Mountain — Indoor and outdoor courts will be built into every one of the six buildings, alongside rooftop pools, running tracks, and fitness centers with views of the Sonoran Desert.
• Optima Sonoran Village — The indoor basketball and pickleball court anchors a 19,000-square-foot residents’ club designed for the kind of daily, unplanned use that builds real connection.
• Optima Lakeview & Optima Signature — Indoor courts keep play going through Chicago winters, where indoor sport space isn’t a luxury; it’s what makes an amenity actually usable.
• Optima Verdana — On the North Shore, the fitness facilities carry the same intent: give residents every reason to stay active, together, as part of the daily rhythm of the building.

The Community a Sport Builds

The most useful thing pickleball has done for residential design isn’t adding courts. It’s making something visible that was always true: shared spaces are only as good as the life inside them.

A pickleball court is a rectangle with a net. A pickleball court where Tuesday games start on their own, where residents who’d never met become regular partners, that’s something no architectural drawing can fully capture.

From Old Town and North Scottsdale to the edge of the Sonoran Preserve to Chicago and the North Shore, Optima has always treated sport as one of the most reliable paths to that outcome. Pickleball is just the latest expression of a philosophy that’s been there from the start: the best amenity is the one that brings people together, not once, at the grand  opening, but every week, for as long as residents choose to call the place home.

Come see the spaces that bring people together. Explore Optima communities and experience the details that define each one.